Apparatus and method for loop flattening and reduction in a single instruction multiple data (simd) pipeline

ABSTRACT

An apparatus and method for loop flattening and reduction in a SIMD pipeline including broadcast, move, and reduction instructions. For example, one embodiment of a processor comprises: a decoder to decode a broadcast instruction to generate a decoded broadcast instruction identifying a plurality of operations, the broadcast instruction including an opcode, first and second source operands, and at least one destination operand, the broadcast instruction having a split value associated therewith; a first source register associated with the first source operand to store a first plurality of packed data elements; a second source register associated with the second source operand to store a second plurality of packed data elements; execution circuitry to execute the operations of the decoded broadcast instruction, the execution circuitry to copy a first number of contiguous data elements from the first source register to a first set of contiguous data element locations in a destination register specified by the destination operand, the execution circuitry to further copy a second number of contiguous data elements from the second source register to a second set of contiguous data element locations in the destination register, wherein the execution circuitry is to determine the first number and the second number in accordance with the split value associated with the broadcast instruction.

BACKGROUND Field of the Invention

The embodiments of the invention relate generally to the field ofcomputer processors. More particularly, the embodiments of the inventionrelate to an apparatus and method for loop flattening and reduction in asingle instruction multiple data (SIMD) processor pipeline.

Description of the Related Art

An instruction set, or instruction set architecture (ISA), is the partof the computer architecture related to programming, including thenative data types, instructions, register architecture, addressingmodes, memory architecture, interrupt and exception handling, andexternal input and output (I/O). It should be noted that the term“instruction” generally refers herein to macro-instructions—that isinstructions that are provided to the processor for execution—as opposedto micro-instructions or micro-ops—that is the result of a processor'sdecoder decoding macro-instructions. The micro-instructions or micro-opscan be configured to instruct an execution unit on the processor toperform operations to implement the logic associated with themacro-instruction.

The ISA is distinguished from the microarchitecture, which is the set ofprocessor design techniques used to implement the instruction set.Processors with different microarchitectures can share a commoninstruction set. For example, Intel® Pentium 4 processors, Intel® Core™processors, and processors from Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. ofSunnyvale Calif. implement nearly identical versions of the x86instruction set (with some extensions that have been added with newerversions), but have different internal designs. For example, the sameregister architecture of the ISA may be implemented in different ways indifferent microarchitectures using well-known techniques, includingdedicated physical registers, one or more dynamically allocated physicalregisters using a register renaming mechanism (e.g., the use of aRegister Alias Table (RAT), a Reorder Buffer (ROB) and a retirementregister file). Unless otherwise specified, the phrases registerarchitecture, register file, and register are used herein to refer tothat which is visible to the software/programmer and the manner in whichinstructions specify registers. Where a distinction is required, theadjective “logical,” “architectural,” or “software visible” will be usedto indicate registers/files in the register architecture, whiledifferent adjectives will be used to designate registers in a givenmicroarchitecture (e.g., physical register, reorder buffer, retirementregister, register pool).

Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) is an architecture forsimultaneously processing multiple data elements packed into registersin response to a single instruction. For example, 16 doubleword values(32-bits in size) packed into a single 512-bit register may bedistributed to functional units via SIMD “lanes” so that the functionalunits can perform concurrent operations on the data elements. By way ofexample, and not limitation, the operations may include multiplicationsof individual data elements, accumulations of the resulting products,permutation/move operations such as swapping positions of the dataelements with other data elements, and reduction operations whichcombine one or more groups of data elements into one.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

A better understanding of the present invention can be obtained from thefollowing detailed description in conjunction with the followingdrawings, in which:

FIGS. 1A and 1B are block diagrams illustrating a generic vectorfriendly instruction format and instruction templates thereof accordingto embodiments of the invention;

FIGS. 2A-C are block diagrams illustrating an exemplary VEX instructionformat according to embodiments of the invention;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of a register architecture according to oneembodiment of the invention; and

FIG. 4A is a block diagram illustrating both an exemplary in-orderfetch, decode, retire pipeline and an exemplary register renaming,out-of-order issue/execution pipeline according to embodiments of theinvention;

FIG. 4B is a block diagram illustrating both an exemplary embodiment ofan in-order fetch, decode, retire core and an exemplary registerrenaming, out-of-order issue/execution architecture core to be includedin a processor according to embodiments of the invention;

FIG. 5A is a block diagram of a single processor core, along with itsconnection to an on-die interconnect network;

FIG. 5B illustrates an expanded view of part of the processor core inFIG. 5A according to embodiments of the invention;

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a single core processor and a multicoreprocessor with integrated memory controller and graphics according toembodiments of the invention;

FIG. 7 illustrates a block diagram of a system in accordance with oneembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 8 illustrates a block diagram of a second system in accordance withan embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 9 illustrates a block diagram of a third system in accordance withan embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 10 illustrates a block diagram of a system on a chip (SoC) inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 11 illustrates a block diagram contrasting the use of a softwareinstruction converter to convert binary instructions in a sourceinstruction set to binary instructions in a target instruction setaccording to embodiments of the invention;

FIG. 12 illustrates data packed in exemplary SIMD registers;

FIG. 13 illustrates SIMD data packed in accordance with a split value;

FIG. 14 illustrates a processor architecture on which embodiments of theinvention may be implemented;

FIG. 15 illustrates data operations performed in response to anexemplary vector reduction instruction;

FIG. 16 illustrates data operations performed in response to a vectorreduction instruction in accordance with an embodiment of the invention;

FIGS. 17-19 illustrate method in accordance with different embodimentsof the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following description, for the purposes of explanation, numerousspecific details are set forth in order to provide a thoroughunderstanding of the embodiments of the invention described below. Itwill be apparent, however, to one skilled in the art that theembodiments of the invention may be practiced without some of thesespecific details. In other instances, well-known structures and devicesare shown in block diagram form to avoid obscuring the underlyingprinciples of the embodiments of the invention.

Exemplary Processor Architectures,

Instruction Formats, and Data Types

An instruction set includes one or more instruction formats. A giveninstruction format defines various fields (number of bits, location ofbits) to specify, among other things, the operation to be performed(opcode) and the operand(s) on which that operation is to be performed.Some instruction formats are further broken down though the definitionof instruction templates (or subformats). For example, the instructiontemplates of a given instruction format may be defined to have differentsubsets of the instruction format's fields (the included fields aretypically in the same order, but at least some have different bitpositions because there are less fields included) and/or defined to havea given field interpreted differently. Thus, each instruction of an ISAis expressed using a given instruction format (and, if defined, in agiven one of the instruction templates of that instruction format) andincludes fields for specifying the operation and the operands. Forexample, an exemplary ADD instruction has a specific opcode and aninstruction format that includes an opcode field to specify that opcodeand operand fields to select operands (source1/destination and source2);and an occurrence of this ADD instruction in an instruction stream willhave specific contents in the operand fields that select specificoperands.

Embodiments of the instruction(s) described herein may be embodied indifferent formats. Additionally, exemplary systems, architectures, andpipelines are detailed below. Embodiments of the instruction(s) may beexecuted on such systems, architectures, and pipelines, but are notlimited to those detailed.

Generic Vector Friendly Instruction Format

A vector friendly instruction format is an instruction format that issuited for vector instructions (e.g., there are certain fields specificto vector operations). While embodiments are described in which bothvector and scalar operations are supported through the vector friendlyinstruction format, alternative embodiments use only vector operationsthe vector friendly instruction format.

FIGS. 1A-1B are block diagrams illustrating a generic vector friendlyinstruction format and instruction templates thereof according toembodiments of the invention. FIG. 1A is a block diagram illustrating ageneric vector friendly instruction format and class A instructiontemplates thereof according to embodiments of the invention; while FIG.1B is a block diagram illustrating the generic vector friendlyinstruction format and class B instruction templates thereof accordingto embodiments of the invention. Specifically, a generic vector friendlyinstruction format 100 for which are defined class A and class Binstruction templates, both of which include no memory access 105instruction templates and memory access 120 instruction templates. Theterm generic in the context of the vector friendly instruction formatrefers to the instruction format not being tied to any specificinstruction set.

While embodiments of the invention will be described in which the vectorfriendly instruction format supports the following: a 64 byte vectoroperand length (or size) with 32 bit (4 byte) or 64 bit (8 byte) dataelement widths (or sizes) (and thus, a 64 byte vector consists of either16 doubleword-size elements or alternatively, 8 quadword-size elements);a 64 byte vector operand length (or size) with 16 bit (2 byte) or 8 bit(1 byte) data element widths (or sizes); a 32 byte vector operand length(or size) with 32 bit (4 byte), 64 bit (8 byte), 16 bit (2 byte), or 8bit (1 byte) data element widths (or sizes); and a 16 byte vectoroperand length (or size) with 32 bit (4 byte), 64 bit (8 byte), 16 bit(2 byte), or 8 bit (1 byte) data element widths (or sizes); alternativeembodiments may support more, less and/or different vector operand sizes(e.g., 256 byte vector operands) with more, less, or different dataelement widths (e.g., 128 bit (16 byte) data element widths).

The class A instruction templates in FIG. 1A include: 1) within the nomemory access 105 instruction templates there is shown a no memoryaccess, full round control type operation 110 instruction template and ano memory access, data transform type operation 115 instructiontemplate; and 2) within the memory access 120 instruction templatesthere is shown a memory access, temporal 125 instruction template and amemory access, non-temporal 130 instruction template. The class Binstruction templates in FIG. 1B include: 1) within the no memory access105 instruction templates there is shown a no memory access, write maskcontrol, partial round control type operation 112 instruction templateand a no memory access, write mask control, vsize type operation 117instruction template; and 2) within the memory access 120 instructiontemplates there is shown a memory access, write mask control 127instruction template.

The generic vector friendly instruction format 100 includes thefollowing fields listed below in the order illustrated in FIGS. 1A-1B.

Format field 140—a specific value (an instruction format identifiervalue) in this field uniquely identifies the vector friendly instructionformat, and thus occurrences of instructions in the vector friendlyinstruction format in instruction streams. As such, this field isoptional in the sense that it is not needed for an instruction set thathas only the generic vector friendly instruction format.

Base operation field 142—its content distinguishes different baseoperations.

Register index field 144—its content, directly or through addressgeneration, specifies the locations of the source and destinationoperands, be they in registers or in memory. These include a sufficientnumber of bits to select N registers from a P×Q (e.g. 32×512, 16×128,32×1024, 64×1024) register file. While in one embodiment N may be up tothree sources and one destination register, alternative embodiments maysupport more or less sources and destination registers (e.g., maysupport up to two sources where one of these sources also acts as thedestination, may support up to three sources where one of these sourcesalso acts as the destination, may support up to two sources and onedestination).

Modifier field 146—its content distinguishes occurrences of instructionsin the generic vector instruction format that specify memory access fromthose that do not; that is, between no memory access 105 instructiontemplates and memory access 120 instruction templates. Memory accessoperations read and/or write to the memory hierarchy (in some casesspecifying the source and/or destination addresses using values inregisters), while non-memory access operations do not (e.g., the sourceand destinations are registers). While in one embodiment this field alsoselects between three different ways to perform memory addresscalculations, alternative embodiments may support more, less, ordifferent ways to perform memory address calculations.

Augmentation operation field 150—its content distinguishes which one ofa variety of different operations to be performed in addition to thebase operation. This field is context specific. In one embodiment of theinvention, this field is divided into a class field 168, an alpha field152, and a beta field 154. The augmentation operation field 150 allowscommon groups of operations to be performed in a single instructionrather than 2, 3, or 4 instructions.

Scale field 160—its content allows for the scaling of the index field'scontent for memory address generation (e.g., for address generation thatuses 2^(scale)*index+base).

Displacement Field 162A—its content is used as part of memory addressgeneration (e.g., for address generation that uses2^(scale)*index+base+displacement).

Displacement Factor Field 1628 (note that the juxtaposition ofdisplacement field 162A directly over displacement factor field 162Bindicates one or the other is used)—its content is used as part ofaddress generation; it specifies a displacement factor that is to bescaled by the size of a memory access (N)—where N is the number of bytesin the memory access (e.g., for address generation that uses2^(scale)*index+base+scaled displacement). Redundant low-order bits areignored and hence, the displacement factor field's content is multipliedby the memory operands total size (N) in order to generate the finaldisplacement to be used in calculating an effective address. The valueof N is determined by the processor hardware at runtime based on thefull opcode field 174 (described later herein) and the data manipulationfield 154C. The displacement field 162A and the displacement factorfield 162B are optional in the sense that they are not used for the nomemory access 105 instruction templates and/or different embodiments mayimplement only one or none of the two.

Data element width field 164—its content distinguishes which one of anumber of data element widths is to be used (in some embodiments for allinstructions; in other embodiments for only some of the instructions).This field is optional in the sense that it is not needed if only onedata element width is supported and/or data element widths are supportedusing some aspect of the opcodes.

Write mask field 170—its content controls, on a per data elementposition basis, whether that data element position in the destinationvector operand reflects the result of the base operation andaugmentation operation. Class A instruction templates supportmerging-writemasking, while class B instruction templates support bothmerging- and zeroing-writemasking. When merging, vector masks allow anyset of elements in the destination to be protected from updates duringthe execution of any operation (specified by the base operation and theaugmentation operation); in other one embodiment, preserving the oldvalue of each element of the destination where the corresponding maskbit has a 0. In contrast, when zeroing vector masks allow any set ofelements in the destination to be zeroed during the execution of anyoperation (specified by the base operation and the augmentationoperation); in one embodiment, an element of the destination is set to 0when the corresponding mask bit has a 0 value. A subset of thisfunctionality is the ability to control the vector length of theoperation being performed (that is, the span of elements being modified,from the first to the last one); however, it is not necessary that theelements that are modified be consecutive. Thus, the write mask field170 allows for partial vector operations, including loads, stores,arithmetic, logical, etc. While embodiments of the invention aredescribed in which the write mask field's 170 content selects one of anumber of write mask registers that contains the write mask to be used(and thus the write mask field's 170 content indirectly identifies thatmasking to be performed), alternative embodiments instead or additionalallow the mask write field's 170 content to directly specify the maskingto be performed.

Immediate field 172—its content allows for the specification of animmediate. This field is optional in the sense that is it not present inan implementation of the generic vector friendly format that does notsupport immediate and it is not present in instructions that do not usean immediate.

Class field 168—its content distinguishes between different classes ofinstructions. With reference to FIGS. 1A-B, the contents of this fieldselect between class A and class B instructions. In FIGS. 1A-B, roundedcorner squares are used to indicate a specific value is present in afield (e.g., class A 168A and class B 168B for the class field 168respectively in FIGS. 1A-B).

Instruction Templates of Class A

In the case of the non-memory access 105 instruction templates of classA, the alpha field 152 is interpreted as an RS field 152A, whose contentdistinguishes which one of the different augmentation operation typesare to be performed (e.g., round 152A.1 and data transform 152A.2 arerespectively specified for the no memory access, round type operation110 and the no memory access, data transform type operation 115instruction templates), while the beta field 154 distinguishes which ofthe operations of the specified type is to be performed. In the nomemory access 105 instruction templates, the scale field 160, thedisplacement field 162A, and the displacement scale filed 162B are notpresent.

No-Memory Access Instruction Templates—Full Round Control Type Operation

In the no memory access full round control type operation 110instruction template, the beta field 154 is interpreted as a roundcontrol field 154A, whose content(s) provide static rounding. While inthe described embodiments of the invention the round control field 154Aincludes a suppress all floating point exceptions (SAE) field 156 and around operation control field 158, alternative embodiments may supportmay encode both these concepts into the same field or only have one orthe other of these concepts/fields (e.g., may have only the roundoperation control field 158).

SAE field 156—its content distinguishes whether or not to disable theexception event reporting; when the SAE field's 156 content indicatessuppression is enabled, a given instruction does not report any kind offloating-point exception flag and does not raise any floating pointexception handler.

Round operation control field 158—its content distinguishes which one ofa group of rounding operations to perform (e.g., Round-up, Round-down,Round-towards-zero and Round-to-nearest). Thus, the round operationcontrol field 158 allows for the changing of the rounding mode on a perinstruction basis. In one embodiment of the invention where a processorincludes a control register for specifying rounding modes, the roundoperation control field's 150 content overrides that register value.

No Memory Access Instruction Templates—Data Transform Type Operation

In the no memory access data transform type operation 115 instructiontemplate, the beta field 154 is interpreted as a data transform field154B, whose content distinguishes which one of a number of datatransforms is to be performed (e.g., no data transform, swizzle,broadcast).

In the case of a memory access 120 instruction template of class A, thealpha field 152 is interpreted as an eviction hint field 152B, whosecontent distinguishes which one of the eviction hints is to be used (inFIG. 1A, temporal 152B.1 and non-temporal 152B.2 are respectivelyspecified for the memory access, temporal 125 instruction template andthe memory access, non-temporal 130 instruction template), while thebeta field 154 is interpreted as a data manipulation field 154C, whosecontent distinguishes which one of a number of data manipulationoperations (also known as primitives) is to be performed (e.g., nomanipulation; broadcast; up conversion of a source; and down conversionof a destination). The memory access 120 instruction templates includethe scale field 160, and optionally the displacement field 162A or thedisplacement scale field 162B.

Vector memory instructions perform vector loads from and vector storesto memory, with conversion support. As with regular vector instructions,vector memory instructions transfer data from/to memory in a dataelement-wise fashion, with the elements that are actually transferred isdictated by the contents of the vector mask that is selected as thewrite mask.

Memory Access Instruction Templates—Temporal

Temporal data is data likely to be reused soon enough to benefit fromcaching. This is, however, a hint, and different processors mayimplement it in different ways, including ignoring the hint entirely.

Memory Access Instruction Templates—Non-Temporal

Non-temporal data is data unlikely to be reused soon enough to benefitfrom caching in the 1st-level cache and should be given priority foreviction. This is, however, a hint, and different processors mayimplement it in different ways, including ignoring the hint entirely.

Instruction Templates of Class B

In the case of the instruction templates of class B, the alpha field 152is interpreted as a write mask control (Z) field 152C, whose contentdistinguishes whether the write masking controlled by the write maskfield 170 should be a merging or a zeroing.

In the case of the non-memory access 105 instruction templates of classB, part of the beta field 154 is interpreted as an RL field 157A, whosecontent distinguishes which one of the different augmentation operationtypes are to be performed (e.g., round 157A.1 and vector length (VSIZE)157A.2 are respectively specified for the no memory access, write maskcontrol, partial round control type operation 112 instruction templateand the no memory access, write mask control, VSIZE type operation 117instruction template), while the rest of the beta field 154distinguishes which of the operations of the specified type is to beperformed. In the no memory access 105 instruction templates, the scalefield 160, the displacement field 162A, and the displacement scale filed162B are not present.

In the no memory access, write mask control, partial round control typeoperation 110 instruction template, the rest of the beta field 154 isinterpreted as a round operation field 159A and exception eventreporting is disabled (a given instruction does not report any kind offloating-point exception flag and does not raise any floating pointexception handler).

Round operation control field 159A—just as round operation control field158, its content distinguishes which one of a group of roundingoperations to perform (e.g., Round-up, Round-down, Round-towards-zeroand Round-to-nearest). Thus, the round operation control field 159Aallows for the changing of the rounding mode on a per instruction basis.In one embodiment of the invention where a processor includes a controlregister for specifying rounding modes, the round operation controlfield's 150 content overrides that register value.

In the no memory access, write mask control, VSIZE type operation 117instruction template, the rest of the beta field 154 is interpreted as avector length field 159B, whose content distinguishes which one of anumber of data vector lengths is to be performed on (e.g., 128, 256, or512 byte).

In the case of a memory access 120 instruction template of class B, partof the beta field 154 is interpreted as a broadcast field 157B, whosecontent distinguishes whether or not the broadcast type datamanipulation operation is to be performed, while the rest of the betafield 154 is interpreted the vector length field 159B. The memory access120 instruction templates include the scale field 160, and optionallythe displacement field 162A or the displacement scale field 162B.

With regard to the generic vector friendly instruction format 100, afull opcode field 174 is shown including the format field 140, the baseoperation field 142, and the data element width field 164. While oneembodiment is shown where the full opcode field 174 includes all ofthese fields, the full opcode field 174 includes less than all of thesefields in embodiments that do not support all of them. The full opcodefield 174 provides the operation code (opcode).

The augmentation operation field 150, the data element width field 164,and the write mask field 170 allow these features to be specified on aper instruction basis in the generic vector friendly instruction format.

The combination of write mask field and data element width field createtyped instructions in that they allow the mask to be applied based ondifferent data element widths.

The various instruction templates found within class A and class B arebeneficial in different situations. In some embodiments of theinvention, different processors or different cores within a processormay support only class A, only class B, or both classes. For instance, ahigh performance general purpose out-of-order core intended forgeneral-purpose computing may support only class B, a core intendedprimarily for graphics and/or scientific (throughput) computing maysupport only class A, and a core intended for both may support both (ofcourse, a core that has some mix of templates and instructions from bothclasses but not all templates and instructions from both classes iswithin the purview of the invention). Also, a single processor mayinclude multiple cores, all of which support the same class or in whichdifferent cores support different class. For instance, in a processorwith separate graphics and general purpose cores, one of the graphicscores intended primarily for graphics and/or scientific computing maysupport only class A, while one or more of the general purpose cores maybe high performance general purpose cores with out of order executionand register renaming intended for general-purpose computing thatsupport only class B. Another processor that does not have a separategraphics core, may include one more general purpose in-order orout-of-order cores that support both class A and class B. Of course,features from one class may also be implement in the other class indifferent embodiments of the invention. Programs written in a high levellanguage would be put (e.g., just in time compiled or staticallycompiled) into an variety of different executable forms, including: 1) aform having only instructions of the class(es) supported by the targetprocessor for execution; or 2) a form having alternative routineswritten using different combinations of the instructions of all classesand having control flow code that selects the routines to execute basedon the instructions supported by the processor which is currentlyexecuting the code.

VEX Instruction Format

VEX encoding allows instructions to have more than two operands, andallows SIMD vector registers to be longer than 28 bits. The use of a VEXprefix provides for three-operand (or more) syntax. For example,previous two-operand instructions performed operations such as A=A+B,which overwrites a source operand. The use of a VEX prefix enablesoperands to perform nondestructive operations such as A=B+C.

FIG. 2A illustrates an exemplary AVX instruction format including a VEXprefix 202, real opcode field 230, Mod R/M byte 240, SIB byte 250,displacement field 262, and IMM8 272. FIG. 2B illustrates which fieldsfrom FIG. 2A make up a full opcode field 274 and a base operation field241. FIG. 2C illustrates which fields from FIG. 2A make up a registerindex field 244.

VEX Prefix (Bytes 0-2) 202 is encoded in a three-byte form. The firstbyte is the Format Field 290 (VEX Byte 0, bits [7:0]), which contains anexplicit C4 byte value (the unique value used for distinguishing the C4instruction format). The second-third bytes (VEX Bytes 1-2) include anumber of bit fields providing specific capability. Specifically, REXfield 205 (VEX Byte 1, bits [7-5]) consists of a VEX.R bit field (VEXByte 1, bit [7]-R), VEX.X bit field (VEX byte 1, bit [6]-X), and VEX.Bbit field (VEX byte 1, bit[5]-B). Other fields of the instructionsencode the lower three bits of the register indexes as is known in theart (rrr, xxx, and bbb), so that Rrrr, Xxxx, and Bbbb may be formed byadding VEX.R, VEX.X, and VEX.B. Opcode map field 215 (VEX byte 1, bits[4:0]-mmmmm) includes content to encode an implied leading opcode byte.W Field 264 (VEX byte 2, bit [7]-W)—is represented by the notationVEX.W, and provides different functions depending on the instruction.The role of VEX.vvvv 220 (VEX Byte 2, bits [6:3]-vvvv) may include thefollowing: 1) VEX.vvvv encodes the first source register operand,specified in inverted (1 s complement) form and is valid forinstructions with 2 or more source operands; 2) VEX.vvvv encodes thedestination register operand, specified in 1 s complement form forcertain vector shifts; or 3) VEX.vvvv does not encode any operand, thefield is reserved and should contain 1111b. If VEX.L 268 Size field (VEXbyte 2, bit [2]-L)=0, it indicates 28 bit vector; if VEX.L=1, itindicates 256 bit vector. Prefix encoding field 225 (VEX byte 2, bits[1:0]-pp) provides additional bits for the base operation field 241.

Real Opcode Field 230 (Byte 3) is also known as the opcode byte. Part ofthe opcode is specified in this field.

MOD R/M Field 240 (Byte 4) includes MOD field 242 (bits [7-6]), Regfield 244 (bits [5-3]), and R/M field 246 (bits [2-0]). The role of Regfield 244 may include the following: encoding either the destinationregister operand or a source register operand (the rrr of Rrrr), or betreated as an opcode extension and not used to encode any instructionoperand. The role of R/M field 246 may include the following: encodingthe instruction operand that references a memory address, or encodingeither the destination register operand or a source register operand.

Scale, Index, Base (SIB)—The content of Scale field 250 (Byte 5)includes SS252 (bits [7-6]), which is used for memory addressgeneration. The contents of SIB.xxx 254 (bits [5-3]) and SIB.bbb 256(bits [2-0]) have been previously referred to with regard to theregister indexes Xxxx and Bbbb.

The Displacement Field 262 and the immediate field (IMM8) 272 containdata.

Exemplary Register Architecture

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of a register architecture 300 according toone embodiment of the invention. In the embodiment illustrated, thereare 32 vector registers 310 that are 512 bits wide; these registers arereferenced as zmm0 through zmm31. The lower order 256 bits of the lower6 zmm registers are overlaid on registers ymm0-15. The lower order 128bits of the lower 6 zmm registers (the lower order 128 bits of the ymmregisters) are overlaid on registers xmm0-15.

General-purpose registers 325—in the embodiment illustrated, there aresixteen 64-bit general-purpose registers that are used along with theexisting x86 addressing modes to address memory operands. Theseregisters are referenced by the names RAX, RBX, RCX, RDX, RBP, RSI, RDI,RSP, and R8 through R15.

Scalar floating point stack register file (x87 stack) 345, on which isaliased the MMX packed integer flat register file 350—in the embodimentillustrated, the x87 stack is an eight-element stack used to performscalar floating-point operations on 32/64/80-bit floating point datausing the x87 instruction set extension; while the MMX registers areused to perform operations on 64-bit packed integer data, as well as tohold operands for some operations performed between the MMX and XMMregisters.

Alternative embodiments of the invention may use wider or narrowerregisters. Additionally, alternative embodiments of the invention mayuse more, less, or different register files and registers.

Exemplary Core Architectures, Processors, and Computer Architectures

Processor cores may be implemented in different ways, for differentpurposes, and in different processors. For instance, implementations ofsuch cores may include: 1) a general purpose in-order core intended forgeneral-purpose computing; 2) a high performance general purposeout-of-order core intended for general-purpose computing; 3) a specialpurpose core intended primarily for graphics and/or scientific(throughput) computing. Implementations of different processors mayinclude: 1) a CPU including one or more general purpose in-order coresintended for general-purpose computing and/or one or more generalpurpose out-of-order cores intended for general-purpose computing; and2) a coprocessor including one or more special purpose cores intendedprimarily for graphics and/or scientific (throughput). Such differentprocessors lead to different computer system architectures, which mayinclude: 1) the coprocessor on a separate chip from the CPU; 2) thecoprocessor on a separate die in the same package as a CPU; 3) thecoprocessor on the same die as a CPU (in which case, such a coprocessoris sometimes referred to as special purpose logic, such as integratedgraphics and/or scientific (throughput) logic, or as special purposecores); and 4) a system on a chip that may include on the same die thedescribed CPU (sometimes referred to as the application core(s) orapplication processor(s)), the above described coprocessor, andadditional functionality. Exemplary core architectures are describednext, followed by descriptions of exemplary processors and computerarchitectures. Detailed herein are circuits (units) that compriseexemplary cores, processors, etc.

Exemplary Core Architectures

FIG. 4A is a block diagram illustrating both an exemplary in-orderpipeline and an exemplary register renaming, out-of-orderissue/execution pipeline according to embodiments of the invention. FIG.4B is a block diagram illustrating both an exemplary embodiment of anin-order architecture core and an exemplary register renaming,out-of-order issue/execution architecture core to be included in aprocessor according to embodiments of the invention. The solid linedboxes in FIGS. 4A-B illustrate the in-order pipeline and in-order core,while the optional addition of the dashed lined boxes illustrates theregister renaming, out-of-order issue/execution pipeline and core. Giventhat the in-order aspect is a subset of the out-of-order aspect, theout-of-order aspect will be described.

In FIG. 4A, a processor pipeline 400 includes a fetch stage 402, alength decode stage 404, a decode stage 406, an allocation stage 408, arenaming stage 410, a scheduling (also known as a dispatch or issue)stage 412, a register read/memory read stage 414, an execute stage 416,a write back/memory write stage 418, an exception handling stage 422,and a commit stage 424.

FIG. 4B shows processor core 490 including a front end unit 430 coupledto an execution engine unit 450, and both are coupled to a memory unit470. The core 490 may be a reduced instruction set computing (RISC)core, a complex instruction set computing (CISC) core, a very longinstruction word (VLIW) core, or a hybrid or alternative core type. Asyet another option, the core 490 may be a special-purpose core, such as,for example, a network or communication core, compression engine,coprocessor core, general purpose computing graphics processing unit(GPGPU) core, graphics core, or the like.

The front end unit 430 includes a branch prediction unit 432 coupled toan instruction cache unit 434, which is coupled to an instructiontranslation lookaside buffer (TLB) 436, which is coupled to aninstruction fetch unit 438, which is coupled to a decode unit 440. Thedecode unit 440 (or decoder) may decode instructions, and generate as anoutput one or more micro-operations, micro-code entry points,microinstructions, other instructions, or other control signals, whichare decoded from, or which otherwise reflect, or are derived from, theoriginal instructions. The decode unit 440 may be implemented usingvarious different mechanisms. Examples of suitable mechanisms include,but are not limited to, look-up tables, hardware implementations,programmable logic arrays (PLAs), microcode read only memories (ROMs),etc. In one embodiment, the core 490 includes a microcode ROM or othermedium that stores microcode for certain macroinstructions (e.g., indecode unit 440 or otherwise within the front end unit 430). The decodeunit 440 is coupled to a rename/allocator unit 452 in the executionengine unit 450.

The execution engine unit 450 includes the rename/allocator unit 452coupled to a retirement unit 454 and a set of one or more schedulerunit(s) 456. The scheduler unit(s) 456 represents any number ofdifferent schedulers, including reservations stations, centralinstruction window, etc. The scheduler unit(s) 456 is coupled to thephysical register file(s) unit(s) 458. Each of the physical registerfile(s) units 458 represents one or more physical register files,different ones of which store one or more different data types, such asscalar integer, scalar floating point, packed integer, packed floatingpoint, vector integer, vector floating point, status (e.g., aninstruction pointer that is the address of the next instruction to beexecuted), etc. In one embodiment, the physical register file(s) unit458 comprises a vector registers unit and a scalar registers unit. Theseregister units may provide architectural vector registers, vector maskregisters, and general purpose registers. The physical register file(s)unit(s) 458 is overlapped by the retirement unit 454 to illustratevarious ways in which register renaming and out-of-order execution maybe implemented (e.g., using a reorder buffer(s) and a retirementregister file(s); using a future file(s), a history buffer(s), and aretirement register file(s); using a register maps and a pool ofregisters; etc.). The retirement unit 454 and the physical registerfile(s) unit(s) 458 are coupled to the execution cluster(s) 460. Theexecution cluster(s) 460 includes a set of one or more execution units462 and a set of one or more memory access units 464. The executionunits 462 may perform various operations (e.g., shifts, addition,subtraction, multiplication) and on various types of data (e.g., scalarfloating point, packed integer, packed floating point, vector integer,vector floating point). While some embodiments may include a number ofexecution units dedicated to specific functions or sets of functions,other embodiments may include only one execution unit or multipleexecution units that all perform all functions. The scheduler unit(s)456, physical register file(s) unit(s) 458, and execution cluster(s) 460are shown as being possibly plural because certain embodiments createseparate pipelines for certain types of data/operations (e.g., a scalarinteger pipeline, a scalar floating point/packed integer/packed floatingpoint/vector integer/vector floating point pipeline, and/or a memoryaccess pipeline that each have their own scheduler unit, physicalregister file(s) unit, and/or execution cluster—and in the case of aseparate memory access pipeline, certain embodiments are implemented inwhich only the execution cluster of this pipeline has the memory accessunit(s) 464). It should also be understood that where separate pipelinesare used, one or more of these pipelines may be out-of-orderissue/execution and the rest in-order.

The set of memory access units 464 is coupled to the memory unit 470,which includes a data TLB unit 472 coupled to a data cache unit 474coupled to a level 2 (L2) cache unit 476. In one exemplary embodiment,the memory access units 464 may include a load unit, a store addressunit, and a store data unit, each of which is coupled to the data TLBunit 472 in the memory unit 470. The instruction cache unit 434 isfurther coupled to a level 2 (L2) cache unit 476 in the memory unit 470.The L2 cache unit 476 is coupled to one or more other levels of cacheand eventually to a main memory.

By way of example, the exemplary register renaming, out-of-orderissue/execution core architecture may implement the pipeline 400 asfollows: 1) the instruction fetch 438 performs the fetch and lengthdecoding stages 402 and 404; 2) the decode unit 440 performs the decodestage 406; 3) the rename/allocator unit 452 performs the allocationstage 408 and renaming stage 410; 4) the scheduler unit(s) 456 performsthe schedule stage 412; 5) the physical register file(s) unit(s) 458 andthe memory unit 470 perform the register read/memory read stage 414; theexecution cluster 460 perform the execute stage 416; 6) the memory unit470 and the physical register file(s) unit(s) 458 perform the writeback/memory write stage 418; 7) various units may be involved in theexception handling stage 422; and 8) the retirement unit 454 and thephysical register file(s) unit(s) 458 perform the commit stage 424.

The core 490 may support one or more instructions sets (e.g., the x86instruction set (with some extensions that have been added with newerversions); the MIPS instruction set of MIPS Technologies of Sunnyvale,Calif.; the ARM instruction set (with optional additional extensionssuch as NEON) of ARM Holdings of Sunnyvale, Calif.), including theinstruction(s) described herein. In one embodiment, the core 490includes logic to support a packed data instruction set extension (e.g.,AVX1, AVX2), thereby allowing the operations used by many multimediaapplications to be performed using packed data.

It should be understood that the core may support multithreading(executing two or more parallel sets of operations or threads), and maydo so in a variety of ways including time sliced multithreading,simultaneous multithreading (where a single physical core provides alogical core for each of the threads that physical core issimultaneously multithreading), or a combination thereof (e.g., timesliced fetching and decoding and simultaneous multithreading thereaftersuch as in the Intel® Hyperthreading technology).

While register renaming is described in the context of out-of-orderexecution, it should be understood that register renaming may be used inan in-order architecture. While the illustrated embodiment of theprocessor also includes separate instruction and data cache units434/474 and a shared L2 cache unit 476, alternative embodiments may havea single internal cache for both instructions and data, such as, forexample, a Level 1 (L1) internal cache, or multiple levels of internalcache. In some embodiments, the system may include a combination of aninternal cache and an external cache that is external to the core and/orthe processor. Alternatively, all of the cache may be external to thecore and/or the processor.

Specific Exemplary In-Order Core Architecture

FIGS. 5A-B illustrate a block diagram of a more specific exemplaryin-order core architecture, which core would be one of several logicblocks (including other cores of the same type and/or different types)in a chip. The logic blocks communicate through a high-bandwidthinterconnect network (e.g., a ring network) with some fixed functionlogic, memory I/O interfaces, and other necessary I/O logic, dependingon the application.

FIG. 5A is a block diagram of a single processor core, along with itsconnection to the on-die interconnect network 502 and with its localsubset of the Level 2 (L2) cache 504, according to embodiments of theinvention. In one embodiment, an instruction decoder 500 supports thex86 instruction set with a packed data instruction set extension. An L1cache 506 allows low-latency accesses to cache memory into the scalarand vector units. While in one embodiment (to simplify the design), ascalar unit 508 and a vector unit 510 use separate register sets(respectively, scalar registers 512 and vector registers 514) and datatransferred between them is written to memory and then read back in froma level 1 (L1) cache 506, alternative embodiments of the invention mayuse a different approach (e.g., use a single register set or include acommunication path that allow data to be transferred between the tworegister files without being written and read back).

The local subset of the L2 cache 504 is part of a global L2 cache thatis divided into separate local subsets, one per processor core. Eachprocessor core has a direct access path to its own local subset of theL2 cache 504. Data read by a processor core is stored in its L2 cachesubset 504 and can be accessed quickly, in parallel with other processorcores accessing their own local L2 cache subsets. Data written by aprocessor core is stored in its own L2 cache subset 504 and is flushedfrom other subsets, if necessary. The ring network ensures coherency forshared data. The ring network is bi-directional to allow agents such asprocessor cores, L2 caches and other logic blocks to communicate witheach other within the chip. Each ring data-path is 1024-bits wide perdirection in some embodiments.

FIG. 5B is an expanded view of part of the processor core in FIG. 5Aaccording to embodiments of the invention. FIG. 5B includes an L1 datacache 506A part of the L1 cache 504, as well as more detail regardingthe vector unit 510 and the vector registers 514. Specifically, thevector unit 510 is a 6-wide vector processing unit (VPU) (see the16-wide ALU 528), which executes one or more of integer,single-precision float, and double-precision float instructions. The VPUsupports swizzling the register inputs with swizzle unit 520, numericconversion with numeric convert units 522A-B, and replication withreplication unit 524 on the memory input.

Processor with Integrated Memory Controller and Graphics

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a processor 600 that may have more than onecore, may have an integrated memory controller, and may have integratedgraphics according to embodiments of the invention. The solid linedboxes in FIG. 6 illustrate a processor 600 with a single core 602A, asystem agent 610, a set of one or more bus controller units 616, whilethe optional addition of the dashed lined boxes illustrates analternative processor 600 with multiple cores 602A-N, a set of one ormore integrated memory controller unit(s) 614 in the system agent unit610, and special purpose logic 608.

Thus, different implementations of the processor 600 may include: 1) aCPU with the special purpose logic 608 being integrated graphics and/orscientific (throughput) logic (which may include one or more cores), andthe cores 602A-N being one or more general purpose cores (e.g., generalpurpose in-order cores, general purpose out-of-order cores, acombination of the two); 2) a coprocessor with the cores 602A-N being alarge number of special purpose cores intended primarily for graphicsand/or scientific (throughput); and 3) a coprocessor with the cores602A-N being a large number of general purpose in-order cores. Thus, theprocessor 600 may be a general-purpose processor, coprocessor orspecial-purpose processor, such as, for example, a network orcommunication processor, compression engine, graphics processor, GPGPU(general purpose graphics processing unit), a high-throughput manyintegrated core (MIC) coprocessor (including 30 or more cores), embeddedprocessor, or the like. The processor may be implemented on one or morechips. The processor 600 may be a part of and/or may be implemented onone or more substrates using any of a number of process technologies,such as, for example, BiCMOS, CMOS, or NMOS.

The memory hierarchy includes one or more levels of cache within thecores 604A-N, a set or one or more shared cache units 606, and externalmemory (not shown) coupled to the set of integrated memory controllerunits 614. The set of shared cache units 606 may include one or moremid-level caches, such as level 2 (L2), level 3 (L3), level 4 (L4), orother levels of cache, a last level cache (LLC), and/or combinationsthereof. While in one embodiment a ring based interconnect unit 612interconnects the integrated graphics logic 608, the set of shared cacheunits 606, and the system agent unit 610/integrated memory controllerunit(s) 614, alternative embodiments may use any number of well-knowntechniques for interconnecting such units. In one embodiment, coherencyis maintained between one or more cache units 606 and cores 602-A-N.

In some embodiments, one or more of the cores 602A-N are capable ofmulti-threading. The system agent 610 includes those componentscoordinating and operating cores 602A-N. The system agent unit 610 mayinclude for example a power control unit (PCU) and a display unit. ThePCU may be or include logic and components needed for regulating thepower state of the cores 602A-N and the integrated graphics logic 608.The display unit is for driving one or more externally connecteddisplays.

The cores 602A-N may be homogenous or heterogeneous in terms ofarchitecture instruction set; that is, two or more of the cores 602A-Nmay be capable of execution the same instruction set, while others maybe capable of executing only a subset of that instruction set or adifferent instruction set.

Exemplary Computer Architectures

FIGS. 7-10 are block diagrams of exemplary computer architectures. Othersystem designs and configurations known in the arts for laptops,desktops, handheld PCs, personal digital assistants, engineeringworkstations, servers, network devices, network hubs, switches, embeddedprocessors, digital signal processors (DSPs), graphics devices, videogame devices, set-top boxes, micro controllers, cell phones, portablemedia players, hand held devices, and various other electronic devices,are also suitable. In general, a huge variety of systems or electronicdevices capable of incorporating a processor and/or other executionlogic as disclosed herein are generally suitable.

Referring now to FIG. 7, shown is a block diagram of a system 700 inaccordance with one embodiment of the present invention. The system 700may include one or more processors 710, 715, which are coupled to acontroller hub 720. In one embodiment, the controller hub 720 includes agraphics memory controller hub (GMCH) 790 and an Input/Output Hub (IOH)750 (which may be on separate chips); the GMCH 790 includes memory andgraphics controllers to which are coupled memory 740 and a coprocessor745; the IOH 750 is couples input/output (I/O) devices 760 to the GMCH790. Alternatively, one or both of the memory and graphics controllersare integrated within the processor (as described herein), the memory740 and the coprocessor 745 are coupled directly to the processor 710,and the controller hub 720 in a single chip with the IOH 750.

The optional nature of additional processors 715 is denoted in FIG. 7with broken lines. Each processor 710, 715 may include one or more ofthe processing cores described herein and may be some version of theprocessor 600.

The memory 740 may be, for example, dynamic random access memory (DRAM),phase change memory (PCM), or a combination of the two. For at least oneembodiment, the controller hub 720 communicates with the processor(s)710, 715 via a multi-drop bus, such as a frontside bus (FSB),point-to-point interface, or similar connection 795.

In one embodiment, the coprocessor 745 is a special-purpose processor,such as, for example, a high-throughput MIC processor, a network orcommunication processor, compression engine, graphics processor, GPGPU,embedded processor, or the like. In one embodiment, controller hub 720may include an integrated graphics accelerator.

There can be a variety of differences between the physical resources710, 7155 in terms of a spectrum of metrics of merit includingarchitectural, microarchitectural, thermal, power consumptioncharacteristics, and the like.

In one embodiment, the processor 710 executes instructions that controldata processing operations of a general type. Embedded within theinstructions may be coprocessor instructions. The processor 710recognizes these coprocessor instructions as being of a type that shouldbe executed by the attached coprocessor 745. Accordingly, the processor710 issues these coprocessor instructions (or control signalsrepresenting coprocessor instructions) on a coprocessor bus or otherinterconnect, to coprocessor 745. Coprocessor(s) 745 accept and executethe received coprocessor instructions.

Referring now to FIG. 8, shown is a block diagram of a first morespecific exemplary system 800 in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention. As shown in FIG. 8, multiprocessor system 800 is apoint-to-point interconnect system, and includes a first processor 870and a second processor 880 coupled via a point-to-point interconnect850. Each of processors 870 and 880 may be some version of the processor600. In one embodiment of the invention, processors 870 and 880 arerespectively processors 710 and 715, while coprocessor 838 iscoprocessor 745. In another embodiment, processors 870 and 880 arerespectively processor 710 coprocessor 745.

Processors 870 and 880 are shown including integrated memory controller(IMC) units 872 and 882, respectively. Processor 870 also includes aspart of its bus controller units point-to-point (P-P) interfaces 876 and878; similarly, second processor 880 includes P-P interfaces 886 and888. Processors 870, 880 may exchange information via a point-to-point(P-P) interface 850 using P-P interface circuits 878, 888. As shown inFIG. 8, IMCs 872 and 882 couple the processors to respective memories,namely a memory 832 and a memory 834, which may be portions of mainmemory locally attached to the respective processors.

Processors 870, 880 may each exchange information with a chipset 890 viaindividual P-P interfaces 852, 854 using point to point interfacecircuits 876, 894, 886, 898. Chipset 890 may optionally exchangeinformation with the coprocessor 838 via a high-performance interface892. In one embodiment, the coprocessor 838 is a special-purposeprocessor, such as, for example, a high-throughput MIC processor, anetwork or communication processor, compression engine, graphicsprocessor, GPGPU, embedded processor, or the like.

A shared cache (not shown) may be included in either processor oroutside of both processors, yet connected with the processors via P-Pinterconnect, such that either or both processors' local cacheinformation may be stored in the shared cache if a processor is placedinto a low power mode.

Chipset 890 may be coupled to a first bus 816 via an interface 896. Inone embodiment, first bus 816 may be a Peripheral Component Interconnect(PCI) bus, or a bus such as a PCI Express bus or another I/Ointerconnect bus, although the scope of the present invention is not solimited.

As shown in FIG. 8, various I/O devices 814 may be coupled to first bus816, along with a bus bridge 818 which couples first bus 816 to a secondbus 820. In one embodiment, one or more additional processor(s) 815,such as coprocessors, high-throughput MIC processors, GPGPU's,accelerators (such as, e.g., graphics accelerators or digital signalprocessing (DSP) units), field programmable gate arrays, or any otherprocessor, are coupled to first bus 816. In one embodiment, second bus820 may be a low pin count (LPC) bus. Various devices may be coupled toa second bus 820 including, for example, a keyboard and/or mouse 822,communication devices 827 and a storage unit 828 such as a disk drive orother mass storage device which may include instructions/code and data830, in one embodiment. Further, an audio I/O 824 may be coupled to thesecond bus 816. Note that other architectures are possible. For example,instead of the point-to-point architecture of FIG. 8, a system mayimplement a multi-drop bus or other such architecture.

Referring now to FIG. 9, shown is a block diagram of a second morespecific exemplary system 900 in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention. Like elements in FIGS. 8 and 9 bear like referencenumerals, and certain aspects of FIG. 8 have been omitted from FIG. 9 inorder to avoid obscuring other aspects of FIG. 9.

FIG. 9 illustrates that the processors 870, 880 may include integratedmemory and I/O control logic (“CL”) 972 and 982, respectively. Thus, theCL 972, 982 include integrated memory controller units and include I/Ocontrol logic. FIG. 9 illustrates that not only are the memories 832,834 coupled to the CL 872, 882, but also that I/O devices 914 are alsocoupled to the control logic 872, 882. Legacy I/O devices 915 arecoupled to the chipset 890.

Referring now to FIG. 10, shown is a block diagram of a SoC 1000 inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Similar elementsin FIG. 6 bear like reference numerals. Also, dashed lined boxes areoptional features on more advanced SoCs. In FIG. 10, an interconnectunit(s) 1002 is coupled to: an application processor 1010 which includesa set of one or more cores 102A-N, cache units 604A-N, and shared cacheunit(s) 606; a system agent unit 610; a bus controller unit(s) 616; anintegrated memory controller unit(s) 614; a set or one or morecoprocessors 1020 which may include integrated graphics logic, an imageprocessor, an audio processor, and a video processor; an static randomaccess memory (SRAM) unit 1030; a direct memory access (DMA) unit 1032;and a display unit 1040 for coupling to one or more external displays.In one embodiment, the coprocessor(s) 1020 include a special-purposeprocessor, such as, for example, a network or communication processor,compression engine, GPGPU, a high-throughput MIC processor, embeddedprocessor, or the like.

Embodiments of the mechanisms disclosed herein may be implemented inhardware, software, firmware, or a combination of such implementationapproaches. Embodiments of the invention may be implemented as computerprograms or program code executing on programmable systems comprising atleast one processor, a storage system (including volatile andnon-volatile memory and/or storage elements), at least one input device,and at least one output device.

Program code, such as code 830 illustrated in FIG. 8, may be applied toinput instructions to perform the functions described herein andgenerate output information. The output information may be applied toone or more output devices, in known fashion. For purposes of thisapplication, a processing system includes any system that has aprocessor, such as, for example; a digital signal processor (DSP), amicrocontroller, an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), or amicroprocessor.

The program code may be implemented in a high level procedural or objectoriented programming language to communicate with a processing system.The program code may also be implemented in assembly or machinelanguage, if desired. In fact, the mechanisms described herein are notlimited in scope to any particular programming language. In any case,the language may be a compiled or interpreted language.

One or more aspects of at least one embodiment may be implemented byrepresentative instructions stored on a machine-readable medium whichrepresents various logic within the processor, which when read by amachine causes the machine to fabricate logic to perform the techniquesdescribed herein. Such representations, known as “IP cores” may bestored on a tangible, machine readable medium and supplied to variouscustomers or manufacturing facilities to load into the fabricationmachines that actually make the logic or processor.

Such machine-readable storage media may include, without limitation,non-transitory, tangible arrangements of articles manufactured or formedby a machine or device, including storage media such as hard disks, anyother type of disk including floppy disks, optical disks, compact diskread-only memories (CD-ROMs), compact disk rewritable's (CD-RWs), andmagneto-optical disks, semiconductor devices such as read-only memories(ROMs), random access memories (RAMs) such as dynamic random accessmemories (DRAMs), static random access memories (SRAMs), erasableprogrammable read-only memories (EPROMs), flash memories, electricallyerasable programmable read-only memories (EEPROMs), phase change memory(PCM), magnetic or optical cards, or any other type of media suitablefor storing electronic instructions.

Accordingly, embodiments of the invention also include non-transitory,tangible machine-readable media containing instructions or containingdesign data, such as Hardware Description Language (HDL), which definesstructures, circuits, apparatuses, processors and/or system featuresdescribed herein. Such embodiments may also be referred to as programproducts.

Emulation (Including Binary Translation, Code Morphing, etc.)

In some cases, an instruction converter may be used to convert aninstruction from a source instruction set to a target instruction set.For example, the instruction converter may translate (e.g., using staticbinary translation, dynamic binary translation including dynamiccompilation), morph, emulate, or otherwise convert an instruction to oneor more other instructions to be processed by the core. The instructionconverter may be implemented in software, hardware, firmware, or acombination thereof. The instruction converter may be on processor, offprocessor, or part on and part off processor.

FIG. 11 is a block diagram contrasting the use of a software instructionconverter to convert binary instructions in a source instruction set tobinary instructions in a target instruction set according to embodimentsof the invention. In the illustrated embodiment, the instructionconverter is a software instruction converter, although alternativelythe instruction converter may be implemented in software, firmware,hardware, or various combinations thereof. FIG. 11 shows a program in ahigh level language 1102 may be compiled using an first compiler 1104 togenerate a first binary code (e.g., x86) 1106 that may be nativelyexecuted by a processor with at least one first instruction set core1116. In some embodiments, the processor with at least one firstinstruction set core 1116 represents any processor that can performsubstantially the same functions as an Intel processor with at least onex86 instruction set core by compatibly executing or otherwise processing(1) a substantial portion of the instruction set of the Intel x86instruction set core or (2) object code versions of applications orother software targeted to run on an Intel processor with at least onex86 instruction set core, in order to achieve substantially the sameresult as an Intel processor with at least one x86 instruction set core.The first compiler 1104 represents a compiler that is operable togenerate binary code of the first instruction set 1106 (e.g., objectcode) that can, with or without additional linkage processing, beexecuted on the processor with at least one first instruction set core1116. Similarly, FIG. 11 shows the program in the high level language1102 may be compiled using an alternative instruction set compiler 1108to generate alternative instruction set binary code 1110 that may benatively executed by a processor without at least one first instructionset core 1114 (e.g., a processor with cores that execute the MIPSinstruction set of MIPS Technologies of Sunnyvale, Calif. and/or thatexecute the ARM instruction set of ARM Holdings of Sunnyvale, Calif.).The instruction converter 1112 is used to convert the first binary code1106 into code that may be natively executed by the processor without anfirst instruction set core 1114. This converted code is not likely to bethe same as the alternative instruction set binary code 1110 because aninstruction converter capable of this is difficult to make; however, theconverted code will accomplish the general operation and be made up ofinstructions from the alternative instruction set. Thus, the instructionconverter 1112 represents software, firmware, hardware, or a combinationthereof that, through emulation, simulation or any other process, allowsa processor or other electronic device that does not have a firstinstruction set processor or core to execute the first binary code 1106.

Apparatus and Method for Loop Flattening and Reduction in aSingle-Instruction Multiple-Data Pipeline

When insufficient data elements are available to fully utilize theavailable SIMD width of the processor's functional units, predication orscalar calculation can be required to prevent erroneous results,exceptions, or faults from the SIMD operations on unused elements.Electrical energy may be wasted performing the SIMD calculation whenonly a smaller number of data elements are required and the realizedperformance gain from the vector calculation compared to the scalarcalculations is low. For example, in molecular dynamics algorithms, aloop over each atom's neighbors is required to calculate a force foreach atom. For some simulation models, the number of neighbors can bevery low. In the case of an average of 24 neighbors with singleprecision vector calculations across only the inner loop, there is anapproximately 25% waste in the use of the vector hardware due tocalculations with unused vector elements.

For nested loops, an alternative to predication/scalar calculations isto use “loop flattening.” In this case, the unused elements at the endof one inner SIMD loop can be used for calculations for the firstelements in the next inner SIMD loop to be calculated. Unfortunately, itis not always straightforward to merge data elements from multiple outerloop iterations. In the case of molecular dynamics, for example, theinner loop might involve calculations of a force that is a function ofthe distance between a single atom and all of its neighbors. With loopflattening, SIMD calculations may involve the distance between two atomsi and i+1 and two sets of neighbor lists. Where a single broadcast forthe x position of atom i could be sufficient for only the inner loop fora single atom, doing two atoms requires multiple instructions to arrangethe elements for SIMD calculation. Likewise, vector loads and storesmight involve two memory pointers instead of one and data elementreductions within a vector are spread across subsets of the elements andrequire multiple results.

In the case of horizontal operations involving operators using multipleelements of a single SIMD vector, inefficient use of vector hardware canalso occur. As an example, horizontal reduction to sum the elements of avector can be calculated using tree reduction where each step of thecalculation uses fewer data elements. It is often the case, however,that multiple vectors require reduction. By using two vector sourceswith two results, the number of full-width SIMD arithmetic operationscan be halved compared to calculating them separately. This can allowfor greater performance when dedicated logic for horizontal reductionsis not available.

Current instruction set architectures (ISAs) do not have support formulti-source reductions or broadcasts with an arbitrary split point.Although instructions such as vbroadcastf32×2 can take multiple sources,they are not capable of controlling the split point for loop flattening.Moreover, the vinsertf32×8 instruction can be used for a multisourcedata element move, but these instructions are limited because 8 elementsare always used from the second source vector. In contrast, oneembodiment of the invention performs two-address vector load/storeoperations on contiguous elements which is uniquely useful for efficientloop flattening.

In particular, the embodiments of the invention include instructionswhich improve the efficiency of SIMD hardware when performing operationssuch as loop-flattening and horizontal reduction. In one embodiment, theinstructions have multiple sources and/or a split point to reduce theinstruction counts of data movement, merging and reduction. They alsoallow for decreased latency and improved use of the core pipeline forinstruction-level parallelism and simultaneous multithreading withlong-latency operations.

Instructions taking multiple sources for SIMD operations and/or a splitpoint, can reduce the instruction counts required for efficient SIMDwith loop flattening and/or horizontal operations. For example, when twovectors require reduction across multiple elements, this can potentiallybe accomplished with fewer SIMD operations than required for doing thetwo reductions separately. Similarly, load, store, and broadcastoperations with two sources are improved by merging data elements neededfrom different iterations of the outer loop.

By way of example, and not limitation, consider the common case of anested loop with a variable inner-loop trip count, for example:

for i := 0 to ni  for j := 0 to nj[i]   ans[i] += FOO(a[i] + b[i][j]); endfor endfor

An example of vector code to execute the inner loop using existing SIMDimplementations might operate in accordance with the following code:

for i := 0 to ni  // Copy a[i] into every element of SIMD vector v1  v1= VPBROADCAST(a[i])  // Set all elements of answer vector to 0  v4 =VPBROADCAST(0)  j := 0  repeat   // Set mask in element n of mask vectork1 if j + n >= nj   k1 = MASK_REMAINDER(j, nj[i])   // Load values frommemory address b[i] into vector based on  mask   v2 = VPMOV(b[i]+j, k1)  // a[i]+b[j]   v3 = VPADD(v1,v2)   // FOO(a[i] + b[i][j])   v4 =VPADD(v4, FOO(v3), k1)   j := j + SIMD_WIDTH  until j > nj[i]  // Reduceinto a single answer  ans[i] = VPREDUCE(v4,k1,ENUM_SUM); endfor

In the above code, because nj will not necessarily be a multiple of theSIMD vector width, some method to mask SIMD operations to preventerroneous results, faults, or exceptions from unused vector elements (orlanes) is required.

In this example, a vector mask, k1, is used that guarantees SIMDoperations are safe and correct. This introduces inefficiency in thevectorization because the speedup will be limited and electrical energyefficiency can be wasted.

For this example, the inefficiency in the last vector iteration isillustrated in FIG. 12, for a SIMD width of 8, where unused dataelements are marked by an X. Moreover, this inefficiency will tend toincrease as nj decreases or as the SIMD vector width increases.Vectorization of the outer loop can result in greater inefficiency whenthe variance in nj is high due to a similar issue of unused lanes wherethe inefficiency for the remainder is no longer bounded by 1/SIMD_WIDTH.

Loop flattening techniques provide an alternative that can improveefficiency where the wasted lanes occur only once at the end of thenested loop. In this case, a single SIMD calculation can be used for thelast inner loop iterations for i and the first for i+1. This isillustrated in FIG. 13 which shows split points 1301 and 1302 inregisters v1 and v2, respectively. In particular, in v1, values a[i+1]are stored in data elements to the right of the split point 1301 whilevalues a[i] remain to the left. Similarly, values from array b[i+1] arestored in data elements to the right of the split point 1302 while thevalues b[i][nj[i]−2] and b[i][nj[i]−1] remain to the left. Given theneed for both sets of values for the last and first inner loopiterations for i and i+1, respectively, the arrangement of data providessignificant performance improvements over prior implementations.

The potential improvement in vector efficiency is limited by existinginstructions. As such, the embodiments of the invention includeadditional instructions capable of managing elements from the differentiterations of the outer loop. These embodiments include: (1) a singleinstruction to perform a broadcast of two values (a[i] and a[i]+1 inthis example) with a specified split point; (2) a single instruction tomove/load contiguous elements from two different memory address into asingle SIMD vector (b[i] and b[i+1] in this example) with a specifiedsplit point; and (3) a single instruction to perform separatereductions, or store contiguous values into two memory locations.

FIG. 14 illustrates an exemplary processor 1455 on which embodiments ofthe invention may be implemented. The exemplary processor includes aplurality of cores 0-N for simultaneously executing a plurality ofthreads. The illustrated embodiment includes SIMD broadcast, move, andreduction (BMR) decode circuitry/logic 1431 within the decoder 1430 fordecoding the instructions described herein and SIMD BMR executioncircuitry/logic 1441 within the execution unit 1440 for executing theinstructions described herein. In response to executing theseinstructions, a memory controller 1490 may implement the underlyingload/store operations by accessing a memory subsystem of the processorwhich includes a system memory 1400, a Level 3 cache 1416 shared amongthe cores, and/or other cache levels (e.g., such as L2 cache 1411).While details of only a single core (Core 0) are shown in FIG. 14, itwill be understood that each of the other cores of processor 1455 mayinclude similar components.

Prior to describing specific details of the embodiments of theinvention, a description of various other components of the exemplaryprocessor 1455 is provided. The plurality of cores 0-N may each includea memory controller 1490 for performing memory operations (e.g., such asload/store operations), a set of general purpose registers (GPRs) 1405,a set of vector registers 1406, and a set of mask registers 1407. In oneembodiment, multiple vector data elements are packed into each vectorregister 1406 which may have a 512 bit width for storing two 256 bitvalues, four 128 bit values, eight 64 bit values, sixteen 32 bit values,etc. However, the underlying principles of the invention are not limitedto any particular size/type of vector data. In one embodiment, the maskregisters 1407 include eight 64-bit operand mask registers used forperforming bit masking operations on the values stored in the vectorregisters 1406 (e.g., implemented as mask registers k0-k7 describedherein). However, the underlying principles of the invention are notlimited to any particular mask register size/type.

Each core 0-N may include a dedicated Level 1 (L1) cache 1412 and Level2 (L2) cache 1411 for caching instructions and data according to aspecified cache management policy. In an alternate embodiment, each L2cache is shared among two or more cores. The L1 cache 1412 includes aseparate instruction cache 1420 for storing instructions and a separatedata cache 1421 for storing data. The instructions and data storedwithin the various processor caches are managed at the granularity ofcache lines which may be a fixed size (e.g., 64, 128, 512 Bytes inlength). Each core of this exemplary embodiment has an instruction fetchunit 1410 for fetching instructions from main memory 1400 and/or ashared Level 3 (L3) cache 1416. The instruction fetch unit 1410 includesvarious well known components including a next instruction pointer 1403for storing the address of the next instruction to be fetched frommemory 1400 (or one of the caches); an instruction translationlook-aside buffer (ITLB) 1404 for storing a map of recently usedvirtual-to-physical instruction addresses to improve the speed ofaddress translation; a branch prediction unit 1402 for speculativelypredicting instruction branch addresses; and branch target buffers(BTBs) 1401 for storing branch addresses and target addresses.

As mentioned, the decode unit 1430 includes SIMD BMR instruction decodecircuitry/logic 1431 for decoding the instructions described herein intomicro-operatons or “uops” and the execution unit 1440 includes SIMD BMRinstruction execution circuitry/logic 1441 for executing the uops. Awriteback/retirement unit 1450 retires the executed instructions andwrites back the results.

Turning now to exemplary embodiments, the SIMD BMR instructions may taketwo sources and/or a split point to allow the necessary SIMD operationsto be performed in a single instruction. The example code recited aboveis repeated here for convenience:

for i := 0 to ni  // Copy a[i] into every element of SIMD vector v1   v1= VPBROADCAST(a[i])   // Set all elements of answer vector to 0   v4 =VPBROADCAST(0)   j := 0   repeat    // Set mask in element n of maskvector k1 if j + n >= nj    k1 = MASK_REMAINDER(j, nj[i])   // Loadvalues from memory address b[i] to vector based on   mask    v2 =VPMOV(b[i]+j, k1)    // a[i]+b[j]    v3 = VPADD(v1,v2)    // FOO(a[i] +b[i][j])    v4 = VPADD(v4, FOO(v3), k1)    j := j + SIMD_WIDTH   untilj > nj[i]   // Reduce into a single answer   ans[i] =VPREDUCE(v4,k1,ENUM_SUM);  endfor

In one embodiment of the invention, rather than calculating a mask basedon the difference of nj[i] and j, a split point (s=nj[i]-j) is insteaddetermined that can be used to perform SIMD operations with two sources.The new broadcast instruction is referred to herein as VPBROADCAST2, thenew move/load instruction is referred to as VPMOV2S, and the newreduction instruction is referred to as VPREDUCE2. These instructionsmay be used with loop flattening as follows:

v1 = VPBROADCAST2 (a[i], a[i+1], s) v2 = VPMOV2S (b[i]+j, b[i+1], s)ans[i], ans[i+1] = VPREDUCE2 (v4, s, ENUM_SUM);

Two complications may arise with loop flattening using theseinstructions. The first is the case where nj<SIMD_WIDTH-1, where twoiterations of the outer loop can be insufficient to utilize all vectorelements. If this possibility is not known at compile time, a mask maybe calculated to ensure safe SIMD operation with unused lanes (seepseudocode with masking below). The other potential complication arisesfor the last iteration of the outer loop where i+1 should not be used inthe SIMD operations. This is easily handled in one embodiment usingseparate instructions for the last iteration.

An analogous optimization (using two sources) may be applied to improvethe efficiency of SIMD calculations for reductions that do not involve asplit point. FIG. 15 illustrates an exemplary tree reduction for a SIMDvector e0-e7 where X represents unused lanes when conventional SIMD addlogic is used.

Often it is the case that multiple reductions are required (e.g. for xand y components). In this case, the reduction can be performed with thesame number of SIMD arithmetic operations with two sources. This isillustrated in FIG. 16 which shows a reduction operation with sourcese0-e7 and f0-f7 using the VPREDUCE2S reduction instruction.

One embodiment of the two-source broadcast instruction operates inaccordance with the following code:

v1 = VPBROADCAST2 (src1, src2, split, k1, v2) for i := 0 to 15  if k1[i]= MASKED   v1[i] := v2[i]  else   if i < split    v1[i] := src1   else   v1[i] := src2   endif  endif endfor

Thus, the VBROADCAST2 instruction sets elements in data lanes for theSIMD vector (v1) to src1 or src2 based on the location of the split(indicated by the split variable). Depending on the implementation, amask (k1) and a write source SIMD vector (v2) may also be specified, inwhich case a destination data lane is set to the value in the sourcevector when the corresponding mask element is set. Alternatively, thedestination data lane may be left unchanged where the write source isthe destination or no write source is specified. In someimplementations, it may also be desirable to restrict the split value toa power of 2 or some other subset of values.

In one embodiment, the two-source broadcast instruction specifies thesrc1 and src2 elements as consecutive elements in a single register ormemory address. In addition, the instruction may operate on multipledata types and bit widths, with or without a mask, a single mask, and/ora write source vector or implied zero source, or two masks and two writesource vectors. The underlying principles of the invention are notlimited to any particular set of variables for the broadcastinstruction.

One embodiment of a method implemented in response to the broadcastinstruction is illustrated in FIG. 17. The method may be executed on thearchitectures described above but is not limited to any particularprocessor architecture.

At 1701, the broadcast instruction is fetched having fields for anopcode, at least two source operands, and a split variable/operand. Thesplit value may be a variable transmitted with the broadcast instruction(e.g., in an immediate) and/or may be retrieved from a source register.At 1702, the broadcast instruction is decoded to generate a decodedbroadcast instruction. In a microcoded implementation, for example, thedecoder generates a plurality of microoperations (uops) to be executedby functional units within the execution unit.

At 1703, data associated with the source operands is retrieved (e.g.,from memory, cache, etc.) and stored in the source registers and theoperations generated by the decoded broadcast instruction are scheduledfor execution on functional units within the execution unit.

At 1704, the operations are executed, retrieving a first subset of dataelements from the first source register and retrieving a second subsetof data elements from the second source register in accordance with thesplit variable/operand. As mentioned, the split value may be read froman immediate of the broadcast instruction or may be stored as a value inanother source register.

At 1705, in response to continued execution of the operations, the firstand second subsets of data elements are stored in first and secondlocations of a destination vector register. For example, the firstsubset may comprise 2 data elements to be stored in the upper 2 dataelement locations within the destination vector register and the secondsubset may comprise 6 data elements to be stored in the lower 6 dataelement locations within the destination vector register. In thisexample, the split value identifies the split location between the 2upper data element locations and 6 lower data element locations. The endresult is a vector register such as v1 shown in FIG. 13.

One embodiment of a move/load (hereinafter “move”) instruction operatesin accordance with the following code:

v1 = VPMOV2S (v3, v4, split, k1, v2)  for i := 0 to SIMD_WIDTH   ifk1[i] = MASKED    v1[i] := v2[i]   else    if i < split     v1[i] :=v3[i]    else     v1[i] := v4[i-split]    endif   endif endfor

In the above code, data elements are set in data lanes for the SIMDvector (v1) to the value in the corresponding data lanes of the sourceSIMD vectors v3 and v4 based on the split. Optionally, a mask (k1) and awrite source SIMD vector (v2) can be specified in which case adestination data lane is set to the value in the source vector (v2) whenthe corresponding mask is set. For example, a bit value of 1 in the maskmay use the value from v2 while a bit value of 0 may use the value fromv3/v4 (depending on the split). The destination data lane may beunchanged in the case where the write source is the destination or awrite source is not specified. Data lanes in the SIMD vectors may bestored in registers or in memory. In some implementations, the splitvalue is restricted to a power of 2 or some other subset and/or theremay be a requirement that memory addresses are aligned to a particularnumber of bytes. As with the broadcast instruction, the split value maybe included in an immediate of the instruction or in another sourceregister.

The VPMOV2S instruction may operate on multiple data types and bitwidths, with or without a mask, with a single mask, and/or a writesource vector or implied zero source, or two masks and two write sourcevectors. The underlying principles of the invention are not limited toany particular set of variables for the instruction. For source vectorsthat are a memory address, non-temporal variants that bypass the datacache may be supported.

One embodiment of a method implemented in response to the moveinstruction is illustrated in FIG. 18. The method may be executed on thearchitectures described above but is not limited to any particularprocessor architecture.

At 1801, the move instruction is fetched having fields for an opcode, atleast two source operands, a split value, and (optionally) a mask value.The split value and/or mask value may be a variable transmitted with themove instruction (e.g., in an immediate) and/or may be retrieved from asource register. At 1802, the move instruction is decoded to generate adecoded move instruction. In a microcoded implementation, for example,the decoder generates a plurality of microoperations (uops) to beexecuted by functional units within the execution unit.

At 1803, data associated with the source operands is retrieved (e.g.,from memory, cache, etc.) and stored in the source registers and theoperations generated by the decoded move instruction are scheduled forexecution on functional units within the execution unit.

At 1804, the operations are executed, retrieving a first subset of dataelements from the first source register and retrieving a second subsetof data elements from the second source register in accordance with thesplit variable/operand and (if used) the mask value. As mentioned, thesplit value may be read from an immediate of the move instruction or maybe stored as a value in another source register. In an implementationwhich uses a mask value, a separate mask bit may specify whether acorresponding data element is to be read from the first/second sourceregisters (e.g., a mask value of 0) or whether a corresponding dataelement is to be read from a third source register (i.e., with a maskvalue of 1). For example, in the above code, if an element is masked,then a corresponding data element is copied from v2 instead of v3 or v4.In an alternate embodiment where zero masking is employed, zeroes areinserted for masked elements instead of data elements from a thirdsource register.

At 1805, in response to continued execution of the operations, the firstand second subsets of data elements are stored in first and secondlocations of a destination vector register, along with data elementsfrom the third source register or zeroes if zero masking is used. Forexample, the first subset may comprise 2 data elements to be stored inthe upper 2 data element locations within the destination vectorregister and the second subset may comprise 6 data elements to be storedin the lower 6 data element locations within the destination vectorregister. With masking, values from v2 or zeroes may be used in place ofone or more of the 8 data elements retrieved from the first and secondsource registers.

Another embodiment of a move instruction operates in accordance with thefollowing code:

v3, v4 = VPMOV2D(v1, split, k1) for i := 0 to SIMD_WIDTH  if k1[i] =UNMASKED   if i < split    v3[i] := v1[i]     else    v4[i-split] :=v1[i]   endif  endif endfor

In this embodiment, elements are set in data lanes for destination SIMDvectors (v3, v4) using the value in the corresponding data lane ofsource SIMD vector v1 in accordance with the split value. In particular,the lower data element positions in v3 are packed with lower dataelements from v1 (i.e., below the split value). Once the split value isreached, the lower data element positions in v4 (i.e., v4[1-split]) arepacked with upper data elements from v1 (i.e., equal to or above thesplit value).

A mask value (k1) can optionally be specified in which case thedestination lane is left unchanged if the corresponding mask value isset or, alternatively, a write source SIMD vector can be specified inwhich case a destination data lane is set to the value in the sourcevector when the corresponding mask is set. Data lanes in SIMD vectorsmay be stored in registers or in memory. In one embodiment, the splitvalue is restricted to a power of 2 or some other subset and/or memoryaddresses are required to be aligned to a particular number of bytes.

The VPMOV2D instruction may operate on multiple data types and bitwidths, with or without a mask, with a single mask, and/or a writesource vector or implied zero source, or two masks and two write sourcevectors. The underlying principles of the invention are not limited toany particular set of variables for the instruction. For source vectorsthat are a memory address, non-temporal variants that bypass the datacache may be supported.

One embodiment of a reduction instruction operates in accordance withthe following code:

ans1, ans2 = VPREDUCE2 (v1, split, k1, v2) ans1 := 0 ans2 := 0 for i :=0 to SIMD_WIDTH  if i < split   if k1[i] = UNMASKED    ans1 := ans1 +v1[i]   else    ans1 := ans1 + v2[i]   endif else   if k1[i] = UNMASKED   ans2 := ans2 + v1[i]   else    ans2 := ans2 + v2[i]   endif  endifendfor

In this embodiment, the values in data lanes for the source SIMD vectors(v1) are reduced into two values based on the split value. As in theprior embodiments, the split value may be specified in an immediate oranother source register. In the example shown, the reduction operator isthe addition operator (+) which adds elements of v1 or v2 to form ans1,with v1 or v2 being selected in each iteration based on an associatedmask bit. Once the split value is reached, ans2 is similarly determinedby adding elements from v1 or v2, once again based on the associatedmask bits. The use of mask bits is optional and is not required forcompliance with the underlying principles of the invention. Moreover, inone embodiment, a zero value may be used for masked values instead ofreading from v2. In one embodiment, the split may be restricted to apower of 2 or some other subset.

Other embodiments of the reduction instruction may also supportdifferent reduction operators (e.g. −, *, MAX, MIN), different SIMDvector widths, different data types/element bit widths or two masks andtwo write source vectors.

One embodiment of a method implemented in response to the reductioninstruction is illustrated in FIG. 19. The method may be executed on thearchitectures described above but is not limited to any particularprocessor architecture.

At 1901, the reduction instruction is fetched having fields for anopcode, first and second source operands, a split variable/operand, and(optionally) a mask value. The split value and/or mask value may be avariable transmitted with the reduction instruction (e.g., in animmediate) and/or may be retrieved from another source register. At1902, the reduction instruction is decoded to generate a decodedreduction instruction. In a microcoded implementation, for example, thedecoder generates a plurality of microoperations (uops) to be executedby functional units within the execution unit.

At 1903, data associated with the first and second source operands isretrieved (e.g., from memory, cache, etc.) and stored in the first andsecond source registers, respectively, and the operations generated bythe decoded reduction instruction are scheduled for execution onfunctional units within the execution unit.

At 1904, the operations are executed, combining a first set of dataelements from the first source register to generate a first result andcombining a second set of data elements from the first source registerto generate a second result. In one embodiment, the first and secondsets of data elements are selected in accordance with the split value.For example, the first set of data elements may be the lower dataelements of the first source register and the second set of dataelements may be the upper data elements in the first source register(subdivided by the split value). In one embodiment, zero or more dataelements in corresponding locations from the second source register aresubstituted for data elements from the first source register based onthe mask value. For example, if a mask bit corresponding to a dataelement is set to 0, then no masking is employed and the correspondingdata element is read from the first source register whereas if the maskbit is 1, the corresponding data element from the second source registeris read and used to generate the first and/or second result.

At 1905, in response to continued execution of the operations, the firstand second results are stored in one or more destination registers. Forexample, the first and second results may be stored as packed dataelements in a first destination register or may be stored in first andsecond destination registers.

In accordance with the following code, another embodiment of a reductioninstruction reduces values from additional source registers based on twomask values:

ans1, ans2 = VPREDUCE2S (v1, v2, k1, v3, k2, v4) ans1 := 0 ans2 := 0 fori := 0 to SIMD_WIDTH  if k1[i] = UNMASKED   ans1 := ans1 + v1[i]  else  ans1 := ans1 + v3[i]  endif  if k2[i] = UNMASKED   ans2 := ans2 +v2[i]  else   ans2 := ans2 + v4[i]  endif endfor

In the above code, each source SIMD vector, v1 and v2, is reduced into acorresponding single value, ans1 and ans2, respectively. In thisparticular example, the reduction operator is the addition (+) of dataelements from v1 and v2. Optionally, masks k1 and k2 are specified,which indicate whether a particular data element is to be read from masksource registers v3 and v4 instead of corresponding data elements in thesource registers v1 and v2, respectively. For example, in oneembodiment, a mask value of 0 indicates that the data element is to beread from v1 or v2 and a mask value of 1 indicates that masking is usedand the data element is to be read from v3 or v4. In one embodiment,zero masking is employed in place of the values from v3 and v4 (i.e.,writing all zeroes in place of the data elements from v1 and v2).

Other embodiments of the reduction instruction may also supportdifferent reduction operators (e.g. +, −, *, MAX, MIN), different SIMDvector widths, different data types/element bit widths or two masks andtwo write source vectors.

In the foregoing specification, the embodiments of invention have beendescribed with reference to specific exemplary embodiments thereof. Itwill, however, be evident that various modifications and changes may bemade thereto without departing from the broader spirit and scope of theinvention as set forth in the appended claims. The specification anddrawings are, accordingly, to be regarded in an illustrative rather thana restrictive sense.

Embodiments of the invention may include various steps, which have beendescribed above. The steps may be embodied in machine-executableinstructions which may be used to cause a general-purpose orspecial-purpose processor to perform the steps. Alternatively, thesesteps may be performed by specific hardware components that containhardwired logic for performing the steps, or by any combination ofprogrammed computer components and custom hardware components.

As described herein, instructions may refer to specific configurationsof hardware such as application specific integrated circuits (ASICs)configured to perform certain operations or having a predeterminedfunctionality or software instructions stored in memory embodied in anon-transitory computer readable medium. Thus, the techniques shown inthe Figures can be implemented using code and data stored and executedon one or more electronic devices (e.g., an end station, a networkelement, etc.). Such electronic devices store and communicate(internally and/or with other electronic devices over a network) codeand data using computer machine-readable media, such as non-transitorycomputer machine-readable storage media (e.g., magnetic disks; opticaldisks; random access memory; read only memory; flash memory devices;phase-change memory) and transitory computer machine-readablecommunication media (e.g., electrical, optical, acoustical or other formof propagated signals—such as carrier waves, infrared signals, digitalsignals, etc.). In addition, such electronic devices typically include aset of one or more processors coupled to one or more other components,such as one or more storage devices (non-transitory machine-readablestorage media), user input/output devices (e.g., a keyboard, atouchscreen, and/or a display), and network connections. The coupling ofthe set of processors and other components is typically through one ormore busses and bridges (also termed as bus controllers). The storagedevice and signals carrying the network traffic respectively representone or more machine-readable storage media and machine-readablecommunication media. Thus, the storage device of a given electronicdevice typically stores code and/or data for execution on the set of oneor more processors of that electronic device. Of course, one or moreparts of an embodiment of the invention may be implemented usingdifferent combinations of software, firmware, and/or hardware.Throughout this detailed description, for the purposes of explanation,numerous specific details were set forth in order to provide a thoroughunderstanding of the present invention. It will be apparent, however, toone skilled in the art that the invention may be practiced without someof these specific details. In certain instances, well known structuresand functions were not described in elaborate detail in order to avoidobscuring the subject matter of the present invention. Accordingly, thescope and spirit of the invention should be judged in terms of theclaims which follow.

What is claimed is:
 1. A processor comprising: a decoder to decode abroadcast instruction to generate a decoded broadcast instructionidentifying a plurality of operations, the broadcast instructionincluding an opcode, first and second source operands, and at least onedestination operand, the broadcast instruction having a split valueassociated therewith; a first source register associated with the firstsource operand to store a first plurality of packed data elements; asecond source register associated with the second source operand tostore a second plurality of packed data elements; execution circuitry toexecute the operations of the decoded broadcast instruction, theexecution circuitry to copy a first number of contiguous data elementsfrom the first source register to a first set of contiguous data elementlocations in a destination register specified by the destinationoperand, the execution circuitry to further copy a second number ofcontiguous data elements from the second source register to a second setof contiguous data element locations in the destination register,wherein the execution circuitry is to determine the first number and thesecond number in accordance with the split value associated with thebroadcast instruction.
 2. The processor of claim 1 wherein the splitvalue is to be included in an immediate of the broadcast instruction. 3.The processor of claim 1 wherein the split value is to be included as anoperand of the broadcast instruction and stored in a third sourceregister.
 4. The processor of claim 1 wherein the split value comprisesan integer value having a range of 0 to N-1, where N comprises a numberof data elements in each of the first and second plurality of packeddata elements.
 5. The processor of claim 4 wherein the executioncircuitry is to use the split value to identify a location at which tostop reading from the first set of data elements and start reading fromthe second set of data elements.
 6. The processor of claim 1 wherein thebroadcast instruction is to identify a mask field, the executioncircuitry to use the mask field to determine whether to write a maskvalue to a data element location in the destination register instead ofone of the first and second sets of contiguous data elements.
 7. Theprocessor of claim 6 wherein the mask field is to be included in animmediate of the broadcast instruction or stored in a third sourceregister.
 8. The processor of claim 6 wherein the mask value comprises apacked data element comprising all zeroes or a packed mask value storedin a mask source register.
 9. A method comprising: decoding a broadcastinstruction to generate a decoded broadcast instruction identifying aplurality of operations, the broadcast instruction including an opcode,first and second source operands, and at least one destination operand,the broadcast instruction having a split value associated therewith;storing a first plurality of packed data elements in a first sourceregister associated with the first source operand; storing a secondplurality of packed data elements in a second source register associatedwith the second source operand; execute the plurality of operations ofthe decoded broadcast instruction including: copying a first number ofcontiguous data elements from the first source register to a first setof contiguous data element locations in a destination register specifiedby the destination operand, and copying a second number of contiguousdata elements from the second source register to a second set ofcontiguous data element locations in the destination register, whereinthe first number and the second number are determined in accordance withthe split value associated with the broadcast instruction.
 10. Themethod of claim 9 wherein the split value is to be included in animmediate of the broadcast instruction.
 11. The method of claim 9wherein the split value is to be included as an operand of the broadcastinstruction and stored in a third source register.
 12. The method ofclaim 9 wherein the split value comprises an integer value having arange of 0 to N-1, where N comprises a number of data elements in eachof the first and second plurality of packed data elements.
 13. Themethod of claim 12 wherein the split value is to be used to identify alocation at which to stop reading from the first set of data elementsand start reading from the second set of data elements.
 14. The methodof claim 9 wherein the broadcast instruction is to identify a maskfield, the mask field to be used to determine whether to write a maskvalue to a data element location in the destination register instead ofone of the first and second sets of contiguous data elements.
 15. Themethod of claim 14 wherein the mask field is to be included in animmediate of the broadcast instruction or stored in a third sourceregister.
 16. The method of claim 14 wherein the mask value comprises apacked data element comprising all zeroes or a packed mask value storedin a mask source register.
 17. A machine-readable medium having programcode stored thereon which, when executed by a machine, causes themachine to perform the operations of: decoding a broadcast instructionto generate a decoded broadcast instruction identifying a plurality ofoperations, the broadcast instruction including an opcode, first andsecond source operands, and at least one destination operand, thebroadcast instruction having a split value associated therewith; storinga first plurality of packed data elements in a first source registerassociated with the first source operand; storing a second plurality ofpacked data elements in a second source register associated with thesecond source operand; execute the plurality of operations of thedecoded broadcast instruction including: copying a first number ofcontiguous data elements from the first source register to a first setof contiguous data element locations in a destination register specifiedby the destination operand, and copying a second number of contiguousdata elements from the second source register to a second set ofcontiguous data element locations in the destination register, whereinthe first number and the second number are determined in accordance withthe split value associated with the broadcast instruction.
 18. Themachine-readable medium of claim 17 wherein the split value is to beincluded in an immediate of the broadcast instruction.
 19. Themachine-readable medium of claim 17 wherein the split value is to beincluded as an operand of the broadcast instruction and stored in athird source register.
 20. The machine-readable medium of claim 17wherein the split value comprises an integer value having a range of 0to N-1, where N comprises a number of data elements in each of the firstand second plurality of packed data elements.
 21. The machine-readablemedium of claim 20 wherein the split value is to be used to identify alocation at which to stop reading from the first set of data elementsand start reading from the second set of data elements.
 22. Themachine-readable medium of claim 17 wherein the broadcast instruction isto identify a mask field, the mask field to be used to determine whetherto write a mask value to a data element location in the destinationregister instead of one of the first and second sets of contiguous dataelements.
 23. The machine-readable medium of claim 22 wherein the maskfield is to be included in an immediate of the broadcast instruction orstored in a third source register.
 24. The machine-readable medium ofclaim 22 wherein the mask value comprises a packed data elementcomprising all zeroes or a packed mask value stored in a mask sourceregister.
 25. A processor comprising: a decoder to decode a moveinstruction to generate a decoded move instruction identifying aplurality of operations, the move instruction including an opcode, andfirst and second source operands, the move instruction having a splitvalue and mask value associated therewith; a first source registerassociated with the first source operand to store a first plurality ofpacked data elements; a second source register associated with thesecond source operand to store a second plurality of packed dataelements; execution circuitry to execute the operations of the decodedmove instruction, the execution circuitry to copy a first number ofcontiguous data elements from the first source register to a first setof contiguous data element locations in a destination register, theexecution circuitry to further copy a second number of contiguous dataelements from the second source register to a second set of contiguousdata element locations in the destination register, the executioncircuitry to alternatively copy a mask value to one or more of thecontiguous data elements in the destination register in accordance witha value of a corresponding one or more mask bits of the mask value; andwherein the execution circuitry is to determine the first number and thesecond number in accordance with the split value associated with themove instruction.
 26. A processor comprising: a decoder to decode areduction instruction to generate a decoded reduction instructionidentifying a plurality of operations, the reduction instructionincluding an opcode, and first and second source operands, the reductioninstruction having a split value and mask value associated therewith; afirst source register associated with the first source operand to storea first plurality of packed data elements; a second source registerassociated with the second source operand to store a second plurality ofpacked data elements; and execution circuitry to execute the operationsof the decoded reduction instruction, the execution circuitry to combinea first set of the first plurality of data elements to generate a firstresult and to combine a second set of the second plurality of dataelements to generate a second result, the first and second sets of dataelements selected in accordance with the split value, the executioncircuitry to substitute a mask value for one or more of the second setof the second plurality of data elements in accordance with a value of acorresponding one or more mask bits of the mask value.